or a punishment he hopes will be lifted if he keeps out of sight for a few days; or a lack of clothing; or because he is getting ready for a journey with travelling companions who are about to depart; or after eating something with an offensive smell; or because a close relative is on his death-bed, or a sick person has no one to nurse him, or someone derives comfort from his presence.
Section
It is not valid for a person to follow an imam whose prayer he knows—or believes—to be invalid, such as when two independent jurists disagree about the qiblah, or about which of two water-vessels is pure. If there is more than one vessel that might be pure, the stronger view is that the prayer is sound so long as the imam’s own vessel has not been definitively identified as impure. Should one be convinced that another worshipper’s vessel is pure, he may certainly pray behind him. Suppose five men have five vessels, one of which is impure; each assumes his own to be pure, performs ablution with it, and then each leads a prayer. On the soundest opinion they must repeat the ‘Ishāʾ prayer, except the one who led it—he must instead repeat Maghrib.
If a Shāfiʿī worshipper follows a Ḥanafī imam who has touched his private parts or undergone cupping, the correct ruling is that the prayer is valid in the case of cupping but invalid in the case of touching, because the legal standard applied is that of the follower.
One may not pray behind someone who is himself a follower, nor behind anyone who is required to repeat his prayer, such as a resident who has relied on tayammum. According to the newer and sounder opinion, a competent reciter may not pray behind an illiterate imam—that is, one who omits a letter of the Fātiḥah or a required doubling (shaddah). Included in this category is the speech-impaired person who assimilates letters where assimilation is unwarranted, and the lisping person who substitutes one letter for another. A person of the same level, however, may follow him. It is disliked to follow a stutterer, a person who repeats letters, or one who makes grammatical mistakes, but if such an error alters the meaning—for example, pronouncing anʿamta with a ḍammah or a kasrah—then the prayer of anyone capable of learning is invalidated. If his tongue is incapable, or he has not yet had time to learn, then if the error is in the Fātiḥah he is treated like an illiterate; otherwise, both his prayer and the prayer of those who follow him are valid.
A man or an intersex person may not pray behind a woman or another intersex person. Likewise, it is invalid for someone who has performed full ablution to follow an imam who has relied on tayammum or merely wiped over leather socks, or for one who is standing to follow an imam who is seated or lying down, or for a worshipper in a complete state of purity to follow a minor, a slave, or a blind person—the blind and the sighted are equal in this ruling according to the basic text. The sounder opinion, however, is that a person in normal health may validly pray behind someone suffering from chronic urinary or bowel incontinence (salas).